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Did the UN Just Admit that Israel Is Among the Happiest Places on Earth?

(Fox News) Zev Chafets - A UN study of the state of international happiness released on Sunday, International Happiness Day, listed the expected top ten, all peaceful, long established, prosperous democracies with homogenous populations, located in the calmest regions of the First World. Then, at number 11, comes Israel. Israel? A hated democracy in the world's most violent neighborhood? A society where boys and girls are drafted into the army at eighteen and men do military reserve duty well into their forties? Where taxes are higher and salaries far lower than in dozen countries that rank lower on the happiness scale? A nation with a history so somber that it has three separate national days of mourning? In its 2015 survey, the OECD, a club of the world's most advanced nations, examined "general satisfaction with life" in its member states. The Danes and the Swiss finished neck-and-neck for first place. Israel finished in a three-way tie for second place with Norway and Finland. For most of the past century, the Arabs of Palestine have believed that the Jewish state was an artificial entity, a concoction of Europeans who would, if sufficiently pressured, go back where they belonged. What the Palestinians do not understand is this is not going to work. In fact, it is a counterproductive waste of time. Year by year, Israel gets bigger, stronger, richer, more technologically advanced and better accepted by the countries that matter (including regional Sunni regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia). And Israelis get happier. The Palestinians need to internalize this. So do American policy-makers and anyone else banking on life becoming so intolerable that Israel gives up on itself. The writer served for five years as director of the Israel Government Press Office and was a delegate to the first Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.
2016-03-22 00:00:00
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